I have not been seen around Wellington for a while, so I think it is about time that I tell you what I am doing now.

I have for many years been worried about the world and its problems, and in 2011 with the help of colleagues I delivered a copy of a book “World on the Edge” to nearly two hundred people, decision makers in politics, business and science in New Zealand.

Months later I asked the three local general election candidates whether they had read the book I had delivered, and the Labour and National candidates told me that they had not read it. Nobody was taking the lead to fix even some of the problems.

So I decided that I must do something myself. My background of a long life as a technologist could be of assistance in helping stop the world’s use of fossil fuels, and so I studied the subject of renewable energy.

I learned that solar panels would soon be the least expensive of all energy production, reducing in price faster that the reduction of wind electrical generation. Electric vehicles and electricity storage would be part of the mix.

Nothing was happening in New Zealand so I looked for a more advanced country. As the problems are world-wide it did not matter where I was. I found that the Philippines government had enacted a Renewable Energy Act in 2008, with some incentives to kick-start it.

So I found myself in the back-blocks, the boondocks (bundok is Filipino for mountain), of the southern island of Mandanao, in a small village (large by NZ standards) in the hilly, forested centre of the island. Poverty was everywhere, though there were people and groups who were assisting. Small assistance from government, but with endemic government corruption I was told it was not very effective. I visited and saw first-hand the lack of political assistance when I was in Tacloban five days after the super-typhoon Haiyan.

I later learned that my hosts were protecting me from a couple of civil wars here. As a Caucasian, I would be mistaken for an American, therefore rich, therefore a target for abduction and ransom and maybe beheading from one of the criminal gangs. The other used extortion, murder and arson as their modus operandi. The travel advisory from every country is never to visit Mandanao, let alone live there.

Technical challenges – roofs in the village

Illuminating work

However I knew I could help, so I now have a company, Lightbeam Inc, official recognition from the Department of Energy as a developer of a solar installation, and am in the process of having importer status with Customs. It is very administratively difficult to set up and run a business here, but possible.

The idea of roof panels on houses was quickly ruled out because most houses are poorly constructed shacks with suspect strength and rusty roofing iron, with trees planted to give as much shade as possible. Also my personal safety was likely to be compromised if I had a high profile in the village. I have not enough money to ever consider utility sized installations. But community sized was within my thinking.

I now have access to a three hectare property on the edge of the village that mostly slopes gently down to the south, so is ideal for the slope I will need for the panels. Most solar farms have the panels close to the ground, with attendant safety and security problems. I envisage multiple uses of the land if the panels are overhead.

The land has around 1500 rubber trees that are past their economic life at 38 years old. Para rubber wood is a tropical hardwood of very low local value, mainly used for pallets, banana boxes, the inside layers of plywood and for firewood. It is very similar to pinus radiata, used for nearly all construction timber in New Zealand. Insect damage is a problem, so borate protection is necessary, which means that the wood must always remain dry.

So the design of a table structure is necessary, with legs well back from the edges. A best fit is around 25 x 24 m, with 300 panels each of 300 W peak under full sunlight. The table top is sloping such that there is a 10 degree slope to the south. If the panels are close together with the adjacent edges sealed then that keeps the wood below dry. The panels become the roof. There is room for about 35 of these array tables on the site.

Para rubber trees (Hevea brasiliensis) on the 3 hectare site

The first array

The design is beyond my abilities so an engineer friend and colleague is stepping up with knowledge of earthquakes, wind, wood strength, fasteners, truss and foundation design, that complies with the local building regulations. When that is approved, and I get the electrical permit, I can start work on building the first array, followed by many more.

On my very limited income of New Zealand Superannuation, I have so far saved enough to buy a diesel engined horizontal band saw from China. With that I can mill the timber to build a shed, a borate bath, trusses and legs. Part of the incentive package I have is access to special loans for renewable energy development, so I will borrow what I need to finance the big cost later, the panels and the electronics to provide three phase mains.

The deal is that I sell to the local electricity distributor at a price that is the blended cost of the electricity that they buy that is not renewable electricity, updated monthly. It is a bit more than 40 % of the retail. The arithmetic shows that I will be able to pay the borrowed money back in about five years if all the income is used to pay the debt. To do this I am putting my time in for free, and the land owner will not receive any rental till later.

Most of the income for the following 45 or so years will be distributed locally to help the poor. I am modelling this on a group where I used to live in Wainuiomata who called themselves ‘The Helping Hand’ who ran quick-fire raffles in the pub and donated to all the do-good local groups, who did not therefore need to have cake stalls etc.

An example of the level of poverty is that there are 80 children in the boondocks who receive free education at one school every weekend, tuition paid for by the Department of Education. But about half cannot afford the 200 peso (NZ$6) per weekend for the four motorcycle trips to get to the village. About 50 percent of homes in this area have no electricity supply, even though it is nearly free if they use less than 20 kWh per month.

Electricity is very expensive retail, more than New Zealand, and only the rich can afford it as the wages structure is way less than in most countries. The installed generating capacity is about twice that of New Zealand, and the population is about 100 million. They do have some good geothermal generation, originally learned from New Zealand, and are second only to USA in production. Also some hydro, natural gas, diesel and a lot of coal.

Decent incentives

Wind is low, and only economic in the NE of the country. Solar is there, in large utility sized farms, with a main player started by a teenager more than three years ago, now with hundreds of staff. They have one array I have visited, above a 1.2 hectare carpark for a major mall, producing 1.5 MW peak. They have produced farms of several hundred MW peak and are now manufacturing solar panels from cells. One of the incentive packages was for a twenty year contract at a single price calculated to give the generator over 16 % return on investment. The price was considerably higher than what I will be getting, subsidised by an extra charge on all buyers of electricity in the country. As solar produced electricity has now reached parity with the lowest cost carbon-based generation this incentive has now been discontinued.

My incentive package provides zero company tax for seven years, with one third taxes for the following seven. Zero customs tariffs for anything imported, and zero VAT (GST equivalent) for anything bought locally or imported. Higher depreciation and access to special loans.

When or if I complete the 35 arrays, taking several years, the income I will be able to distribute from the over 4 GWh/yr will be substantial, which will go a very long way locally. But starting only after the first five years or more, after the loans are paid back. Of course over fifty years anything can happen, so the income will change in the future.

After I buy a slow electric car I will also add e-vehicle battery charging, but only during daylight hours.

So I am doing my bit to help both the world and the local community. What I wish to do is to provide a demonstration for others to copy. It will be my gift to the world before I exit.

George Jones is a Companion of the Royal Society of New Zealand, retired scientist and adventurer. He lives in a small village in the southern island of Mindanao, in the Philippines, where he is building a solar array to supply renewable energy.

If for some reason someone wished to delay the introduction of solar panels into New Zealand, here are some ideas on how to do it.

1. Insist that the electrical industry eliminate any incentives that might inadvertently have been imposed in the past. Make sure that the Electricity Authority stamps out these incentives where it can, by saying that the supply authorities are doing so within the rules.

2. Add a shaming promotion that makes sure that it is known that anybody leaving the grid will have the stigma of being seen to be anti-social, as all other users on the grid, especially the poor, will have to shoulder the costs, to guarantee the profitability of the industry.

3. Insist that the profitability of the electrical industry is dependent on an increasing electricity usage, and that this is wrapped up in the law, so that big business always trumps the interests of the consumer.

4. If a city council works out that their street lighting would use half the electricity if the lights were changed to LEDs, then insist that if they did that then the price would double, to maintain the electric supplier’s guaranteed profit margin.

5. Never use the word e-democracy, meaning energy- or in this case electricity-democracy, as that would give far too much power to the people. Make sure they never hear that ‘government for the people’ is followed by ‘by the people’.

6. Make sure that the Electrical Authority overseeing the industry is stacked with pro-industry professionals. In this way the rules of the game will be stacked in the industry’s favour. Make only a token gesture that the people have some say, by calling for submissions, so that they can then take no notice of them, but still be able to say that they consulted with the public. Make sure that the illusion is there by including ‘for the longterm benefit of consumers’ in the Authority’s reason for existing.

7. Make sure that the background papers for such submissions are filled with highly technical words, and are always based on the most pessimistic forecasts that the consultants can find.

8. Advise the industry to look carefully at ways to bill electricity to try to keep the impact of this disruptive technology to manageable proportions, like a maximum of 5 percent market penetration.

9. Insist that only professionals install solar panels, as the arithmetic required would be too complex for ordinary people, and the installation too hazardous.

10. Make the approvals sufficiently complex and onerous that the ordinary citizen cannot understand them, so have to call in professionals. Never mention that any handiman with number 8 wire experience is capable of installing panels and laying the cables ready for the electrician to connect.

11. Make sure that the installation rules include special protection for solar electrical wiring to clearly differentiate very lethal from merely lethal mains wiring. Insist on laying the cables in plastic piping clearly labeled as ‘solar’ every metre or two so that anybody in the roof space is more likely to be killed by the loosely bundled mains wiring without such protection.

12. Have a list of approved electrical hardware, and keep it as close a secret as possible. Make sure that only locally sourced steel is used, and that the aluminium industry is subsidised so that only locally sourced aluminium is used.

13. Accident Compensation Commission must insist that only professionals install solar, so that in the event of an accident the compensation comes from the bin of money paid from employer/employee levies and not from general taxation that would cover ordinary people.

14. Insist that the safety requirements are tightened so that very few are allowed on a roof, the most dangerous place in the country.

15. Insist that DC is much more dangerous than AC, in spite of the close connection of the two in music. Therefore insist that Thomas Edison was not as bright as Nikola Tesla.

16. Insist that batteries are far too expensive to use as storage, and only last three years anyway. Use as an example the fact that cellphone batteries last only this long. Do not tell the public that that is because they are almost always overcharged. Never mention that with proper charging, batteries will last for at least two decades. Never admit that the price of batteries will be less next year, falling very rapidly over the next few years.

17. Quietly welcome the introduction of electric vehicles as this will mean usually overnight charging, so with minimum impact on the electrical system, but more industry sales income. Never mention that electrical vehicles’ batteries can fill in the evening peak of electricity usage, further relieving the pressure on the system. That would diminish the need for building more infrastructure, with its guaranteed return on investment. Make sure that the public never considers using a vehicle’s battery for over-night consumption as they might then decide to go off-grid.

18. Make it known that the life of an essential component of the installation will last only a few years and will need replacing often. Never say that the electronic technology will likely outlast the panels, and that the panels are likely to last three or four decades. Quote highly inflated figures on the degradation of the panel output, and do not mention that the addition of an extra panel a decade will compensate.

19. Never mention that the price of solar is coming down in leaps and bounds each year, mainly from the reduced price of the panels, inverters and improved mounting technology. Keep the permitting costs as high as possible.

20. Never mention that the price of solar is already lower than the price of every other form of electricity generation in especially sunny countries. And that dozens more countries will be added to this list in the next year or two.

21. Hide the fact that new solar installations world-wide are doubling about every two years, amounting to 320 GWp this year 2016, over thirty times New Zealand’s installed capacity. This is the equivalent of about eleven times the amount of electricity New Zealand uses, measured in kWh units. Next year expect a 40 % increase, the year after another 40 % and so on.

22. Never consider that the electrical industry as we know it is a sunset industry, with all assets correctly valued at the scrap price, less the cost of retrieval.

23. Make sure that neighbour-to-neighbour electricity sales are illegal, so that the monopoly local grid is the only option for sales. Keep the price of export to the local electricity supplier as low as possible, preferably free, to discourage investment in solar.

24. In this way the profitability of the local grid is maintained, especially as the cost of transmission from the other end of the country can also be billed, even though not used.

25. Change the name of net-metering to own-use, as the former implies that the subtraction occurs at the meter, whereas it really is net-billing. Steven Strong’s concept in 1979 is no longer acceptable: it implies export at the same price as import.

26. Keep implying that our electricity is mostly renewable, so we do not get any advantage from solar when considering global warming.

27. Spread misinformation about embedded energy in solar panels. Tell people that there is more energy in its production that you get from the solar panel over its lifetime.

28. Keep emphasising the front-up cost of solar, and never mention that the economics are very good indeed if considered in the longer-than-election-cycle time frame.

29. Instill into the banking industry the certain knowledge that financing solar is a very risky business and requires a specially high risk-based interest rate.

30. Promote that the added value to the house will likely increase its value, increasing the city rates demand. At the same time, promote the fact that the resale value of the house will fall because nobody wants solar.

We’ve tried them all to some degree!

Our electrical industry in collaboration with the government has tried most of the above, in parallel with what is happening in some other countries.

So maybe it is time to try something else. It would be an ugly demise if the industry is allowed to collapse in a series of death spirals. Shades of Solid Energy, eh? Maybe the government would then buy back what it does not already own of the industry for a dollar, with its accumulated debt, like the railways. But can or should the taxpayer afford it?

Learn from history, otherwise the same mistakes are likely to recur. Learn about the sailing ship effect, when sailing ships first had competition from steamships. Instead of taking four or five months to travel between England and New Zealand, the clipper was developed, so the journey then took only six weeks. The same thing happened in New Zealand when ninety years ago science was applied to farming. Understand “The significance of Mr. Richard Buckley’s exploding trousers: Reflections on an aspect of technological change in New Zealand dairy farming between the world wars” that earned its Massey author an Ig-nobel prize. Note the effect on Air NZ when competition with Australian airlines first appeared – air bridges were promptly built. Look up the history of the development of wool as a fibre when synthetics were first introduced.

In a 1918 US trade union address by Nicholas Klein, after relating a story about the first demonstration of a locomotive by George Stephenson: “And, my friends, in this story you have a history of this entire movement. First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you. And that is what is going to happen to the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America.”

Ignore the fact that solar engineer Steven Strong was named by Time magazine environmental “Hero of the Planet” in 1999, the closest thing we have now to monuments.

The lesson to be learnt is that the introduction of solar as a disruptive technology can be delayed only by being such a good industry that the people love the companies so much that they will be very loyal to the brand. Think “it’s the putting right that counts”. In spite of the significant economic advantage of solar the people will not abandon their loved electricity supplier.

Another way

To do this the first thing is to abandon the attitude that it is a God-given and government-given right for the companies to receive a guaranteed return on investment.

So, recognising the true value of the infrastructure, parts of which will have negative value, lower the electricity price perhaps to a half or a quarter of its current value. Recognise that the whole system really is a computer, add considerable control software to easily integrate distributed and sporadic generation, thus abandoning the concept of base load.

Become a lean and friendly industry, and there will be no need for call centres, except to accept accolades and congratulations from the people.

There is another way. Proudly accept the future is renewable energy, especially solar. Develop the required software to integrate all renewable energy and storage systems, including ocean, run-of-river, wind, solar, battery, vehicle, pumped storage. Collaborate and incentivise the public to help build a secure reliable electrical system that has minimum cost. Perhaps close to zero for energy.

Only then will we be able to hold our head up in the international community and say “We are a small country in the Southwest Pacific that has done it right yet again, and we are now in a position to help you”.

George Jones is a Companion of the Royal Society of New Zealand, retired scientist and adventurer. He lives in a small village in the southern island of Mindanao, in the Philippines, where he is building a solar array to supply renewable energy.

Experts, just about everyone and even the government would like New Zealanders to be zipping around in electric cars. But it won’t happen, at least not rapidly. Otago University’s Director of the Centre for Sustainability Dr Janet Stephenson explains. She also tells us why New Zealanders are buying photovoltaic solar panels, wonders why we’re buying electric bicycles, and points out that the new Royal Society of New Zealand report on Climate Change Mitigation Options for New Zealand found only one highway to low emissions – reducing the use of fossil fuels.

What is the importance of the Royal Society of New Zealand report?

The thing that’s really important about the Royal Society report is that no one until now has pulled together in a comprehensive way the mitigation opportunities for New Zealand. It’s very important from that perspective. In our work on it we started off talking about different pathways to achieving lower emissions but found there is really only one highway and that is simply reducing the use of fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas, in that order of priority. That really has to be the main change in the short-to-medium term, and there are other opportunities in the longer term. But the big focus has to be how do we cut fossil fuels out of our lives.

Cutting fossil fuels means driving electric vehicles, right?

Well, that is one of many actions people can take. But the problem is the timeframe. In our Energy Cultures research programme we were interested how long it would take to get 20 percent of New Zealand’s transport fleet to be electric vehicles, and experts gave us a range of answers from 5-20 years. However, when we did some modelling on uptake we found that unless there were policies to support it, you might only get around five percent of electric vehicles in the fleet in 20 years, partly because we don’t tend to buy new cars, and hold on to our old cars for such a long time. There’s a lot of hope about the implications of electric vehicles for reducing our emissions but it’s unlikely to have much of an impact in the next couple of decades unless prices come way down or there is strong policy support.

The Minister of Transport is super keen on electric vehicles and has said a number of times over the past year that the government will be bringing in some policies to support faster uptake, but we haven’t seen anything yet.

From a global perspective, EV uptake also depends on the improvement and lowering in price of things like battery storage or retrofitting. You really have to look across the fleet and ask where are the niche opportunities for EVs? Those are probably going to be in areas where people are doing short trips like commuting, or high mileage but stopping so they can recharge, or in vehicles that move slowly but need huge grunt. Retrofitting bus fleets might be a good example. There is a lot more work needed to be done beyond simply the importation of electric vehicles. There are also opportunities for thinking more broadly about not necessary replacing like with like.

If we don’t replace petrol or diesel cars with electric cars, then what?

There are a number of really interesting other options – obviously more use of public transport, biking and walking, but there are also new types of electric vehicles coming in – like the light three-wheeled and four-wheeled delivery vehicles that New Zealand Post is already using in New Plymouth, and electric bikes. If we get a big uptake of lighter more vulnerable vehicles it may require a rethink on layouts of roads. We’re seeing new businesses emerging globally that offer access to shared cars or bikes, as well as people clubbing together to share ownership. In the near future, autonomous vehicles will be able to zoom around picking people up and delivering them. Shared vehicles allow much more efficient use of a smaller number of vehicles.

Urban freight is a particularly under-researched area and we’re also really interested in changes around active transport – New Zealanders are walking and cycling more, although we tend to use bicycles for recreation rather than commuting or getting to school. But there’s a big surge in uptake of electric bikes and the interesting thing is they allow you to go faster and therefore be safer in urban traffic, as well as not be sweaty when you get to work. We’re not sure what people are using them for and this is something we’d like to find out more about.

Change can actually happen remarkably fast when a society is ready for it, as we’re seeing with things like the internet and mobile phones. And change can also occur in quite unanticipated ways. Our team has done work looking at mobility choices amongst young people. There is a significant change occurring in many parts where young people are getting drivers licenses much later, if at all, and they are much less likely to own a car. Nobody is exactly sure why this is happening, but it’s likely to be driven by a whole lots of influences coming together. In research for the Ministry of Transport, one of our researchers found that for some young people owning a car is no longer symbolic of having made it, being a grown up. Instead cars are seen as an expensive problem and it is felt that it’s better to have the freedom of different choices about how to get from a to b, such as walking, biking, or public transport. Obviously this works better in an urban situation but this generational shift is definitely something that is occurring in New Zealand.

Are there shifts on other kinds of energy use?

Yes, I’m part of another research programme called Green Grid, where we look at the future of the electricity grid under high levels of renewable generation, smart technologies, and consumers adopting new technologies. One of the more intriguing aspects of our work is where we are seeing an intersection of people’s aspirations with technology developments so that people are being able to move quite rapidly in new directions.

Photovoltaics are a really interesting example. If you look at the uptake curve in New Zealand – bearing in mind that New Zealand has no subsidies – we have seen a rapid uptake of photovoltaics since 2012. Our research has shown that New Zealanders have an immense appetite for this. While decisions may be triggered by the fact that PV prices have fallen a lot in recent years, this is not necessarily a rational economic decision if you did all the sums. Instead, people are mainly doing it so that they don’t have to be so reliant on buying power from their electricity company, they want some independence, and this has been shown across various surveys we have done. New Zealanders are taking up photovoltaics because of this interesting desire for independence; not primarily for environmental reasons or because they think they are going to make a profit, which tend to be the drivers elsewhere in the world.

As a result of this rapid uptake, lines companies in New Zealand are doing a bit of a double take. If the rate of uptake continues it could have quite serious implications for them, if it’s not well managed. Overall responses from the energy sector have been variable, some saying it shouldn’t be happening, it’s not economically rational. Others are saying it’s better to invest in electric vehicles because they are better at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Both may be true, but that’s not the point … think about what drives people’s choices when they buy a car, or a house. It would rarely be the environment or making money! This appetite amongst Kiwis for PV means that there are now a proliferation of companies installing photovoltaics, some offering zero upfront cost offers for installation. Interestingly, once people have PV and are making their own power, it changes how they use energy and is creating new understandings of energy in people’s everyday lives, leading to more consciousness of energy use.

Are there actually environmental benefits when people install photovoltaics?

Yes, but they are really around the diversification of energy generation to local levels. If you’re looking at where this might go in the future, it’s into what we’re calling prosumer collectives. A prosumer is someone who both consumes and produces electricity. People can be prosumers as individuals, but internationally we are starting to see people start to collectivise. One example is clusters of people buying and selling their surplus solar power to each other. If you have a PV and don’t use it all, you can have a direct relationship with someone else who can use it – say with someone who has a flat in the city and has no opportunity to generate power. There is strong interest in this in New Zealand.

These kinds of changes are making the electricity industry quite nervous, because there are really remarkable implications. New and far cheaper forms of energy storage are emerging as well. One way of looking at it is to think about phone choice: with a digital phone you give up on 100% reliability (because sometimes you might be out of range) but for that you gain a whole lot of benefits as opposed to having a landline. You can think of electrical systems in this way. If you think the benefits of something like PV are worth it, even if you lose some reliability, you might just make the switch.

We’re running a bit late with this one: recorded last week before the big wind left Gareth powerless for six days (a bit like Glenn’s PC), John Cook ruminates on the result of the Australian election, the boys marvel at the Mail’s myth making about Arctic sea ice, and look forward to the release of the first part of the next IPCC report. And much, much more. Show notes below the fold…

Watch The Climate Show on our Youtube channel, subscribe to the podcast via iTunes, listen to us via Stitcher on your smartphone or listen direct/download from the link below the fold.

Show notes

News

Australian election, and prospects for climate policy:

Australia’s new government is likely to repeal the carbon price, by striking a deal with crossbenchers in the Senate after July 2014, or possibly going to a special election if it looks electorally attractive. Still, carbon pricing remains the logical choice for Australia’s longer term climate policy.

The Twelfth Session of Working Group I (WGI-12) will take place from 23 to 26 September 2013 in Stockholm, Sweden. This Session of WGI is being convened to approve the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) of the Working Group I contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (WGI AR5) and accept the underlying scientific and technical assessment.

The WGI AR5 Summary for Policymakers will be available on 27 September 2013.

At long last: John Cook from Skeptical Science rejoins the Climate Show team for the first show of 2013. He hooks up with Glenn and Gareth to review Australia’s big heatwave, and stays around to dig into the new Greenpeace report on dirty energy, discuss Obama’s inauguration speech and Boris Johnson’s climate blunder, the latest scary news on sea level rise and the implications for the future. Plus much much more…

Watch The Climate Show on our Youtube channel, subscribe to the podcast via iTunes, listen to us via Stitcher on your smartphone or listen direct/download from the link below the fold.

If global warming continues, the study projects that the number of new monthly records will be 12 times as high in 30 years as it would be without climate change. “Now this doesn’t mean there will be 12 times more hot summers in Europe than today — it actually is worse,” Coumou points out. For the new records set in the 2040s will not just be hot by today’s standards. “To count as new records, they actually have to beat heat records set in the 2020s and 2030s, which will already be hotter than anything we have experienced to date,” explains Coumou. “And this is just the global average — in some continental regions, the increase in new records will be even greater.”

A new report commissioned by Greenpeace says the world could be locked into dangerous levels of global warming if 14 planned fossil fuel projects get the go ahead. The projects in the Point of No Return report include the expansion of Indonesian and Australian coal exports, a tripling of production from the Canadian tar sands and extensive offshore drilling in Brazilian waters.All in all, the 6,340 million tonnes of CO2 a year by 2020, more than the total output of the US.RTCC news, full report pdf.

But if Obama has his way that’s all about to change: Youtube video here.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says his top hopes for 2013 are to reach a new agreement on climate change and to urgently end the increasingly deadly and divisive war in Syria.

Dispatch from London…. Shock! Horror! Boris says something really stupid! He says this week’s snow casts doubt on Climate science. Of course, as Leo Hickman points out in The Guardian he’s only trolling BUT it still matters because he could be Britain’s PM one day…

Sea level rise: a sequence of stories…

The researchers found that the natural relationship displays a strong rise in sea level for CO2 increase from 180 to 400 parts per million, peaking at CO2 levels close to present-day values, with sea level at 24 +7/-15 metres above the present, at 68 per cent confidence limits.

A catastrophic rise in sea level before the end of the century could have a hitherto unforeseen side effect. Melting icebergs might cool the seas around Greenland and Antarctica so much that the average surface temperature of the planet falls by a degree or two. This is according to unpublished work by climate scientist James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City.

Solutions

Sprinkling billions of tonnes of mineral dust across the oceans could quickly remove a vast quantities of climate-warming carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, according to a new study. The proposed “geoengineering” technique would also offset the acidification of the oceans and could be targeted at endangered coral reefs, but there’s a downside — it would require a mining effort on the same scale as the world’s coal industry and would alter the biology of the oceans.

Researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) are embarking on an £800,000 project to replicate photosynthesis, the process by which plants convert sunlight into sugars to help them grow.

The process will be used to create hydrogen, which can be used as a zero-emission fuel for cars, or converted into green electricity.

It is hoped the method, which involves placing tiny solar panels on microbes to harness sunlight and drive the production of hydrogen, will be a more efficient way of converting the sun’s energy than currently exists.

]]>https://sciblogs.co.nz/hot-topic/2013/01/24/the-climate-show-32-a-cooks-tour-of-the-aussie-heat/feed/0Paper 2.0: From flexible screens to smart solar cellshttps://sciblogs.co.nz/griffins-gadgets/2012/10/17/paper-2-0-from-flexible-screens-to-smart-solar-cells/
https://sciblogs.co.nz/griffins-gadgets/2012/10/17/paper-2-0-from-flexible-screens-to-smart-solar-cells/#respondWed, 17 Oct 2012 05:51:21 +0000https://sciblogs.co.nz/griffins-gadgets/?p=3936Sir Richard Friend, the Cambridge University physics professor who has just completed a lecture tour of New Zealand, recently stacked all 78 volumes of the 2005 editions of Physical Review on the floor of his office.Sir Richard Friend

“I probably broke all sorts of OSH rules,” says Sir Richard, whose towering wall of paper comprised 80,000 pages of journal papers submitted to the physics journal in that one year period. In 1962 the journal, which accounts for a decent chunk of the new peer-reviewed literature published each year in the field of physics, filled six volumes – 6,000 pages.

Sir Richard’s point – the published output of the science world has increased voluminously in the past few decades. The problem, as he sees it, is that most of it is crap.

“The scientific literature is an absolute minefield. Most of it is rubbish, worse it is boring.”

Not surprising then, that Sir Richard has set out in his career to discover things for himself, through trials and experiments that have resulted in dozens of patents, at least three spin-off companies and successful partnerships with major consumer electronics makers.

The two golden eras of Cambridge, says Sir Richard, where the late 1600s when Sir Isaac Newton was carrying out his experiments in optics and gravitation and the 1920s when Sir Ernest Rutherford undertook several pioneering nuclear physics experiments. Sir Richard is the Cavendish Professor of Physics, a position once occupied by Sir Ernest, so he feels a connection to the famous New Zealander. Sir Alan MacDiarmid, another Nobel-winning New Zealand scientist, mentored Sir Richard and his team who were the first to make a polymer light-emitting diode.

Since that development in 1989, Sir Richard’s team has expanded on its work on polymer light emitting diodes and molecular semiconductors, developing technology used in consumer electronics through to solar power cells.

PLED screens

The 1989 discovery at the Cavendish Laboratory led to the founding of Cambridge Display Technology in 1992, a company set up to commercialise polymer light emitting diode technology. What are the advantages of P-OLED over more conventional LCD screens? According to Cambridge Display Technology:

Because P-OLEDs emit their own light, they are brighter, clearer, and have a virtually unlimited viewing angle. Their high contrast and wide dynamic brightness capabilities make them a better solution for night-time and daylight use. P-OLEDs also have a very fast image refresh rate that is maintained at low temperature, and are ideal for full colour video in TV, internet devices, PDAs and other ‘smart’ personal display products. Because P-OLEDs do not require a power-hungry backlight, they are energy efficient and are thinner and lighter weight.

Hence, CDT’s partnering with electronics companies like Phillips and Seiko-Epson. Now, OLED screens are starting to make their mark in the tech space as they become the screens of choice for smart phones and a new generation of TV sets. Video walls are the next step, with the technology underpinning prototypes for virtual wallpaper that can change colour and display images and video. CDT was bought by Japanese chemical company Sumimoto in 2007.

Flexible displays

Plastic Logic’s flexible screen

After pioneering ways to develop higher quality displays at competitive prices, Sir Richard turned his attention to developing screens that can flex. This is often seen as the successor technology to the current range of rigid tablets and smart phones on the market. The ability to roll up your phone or tablet is an attractive proposition.

“Why isn’t it in the shops? The investors might ask that too,” says Sir Richard who founded the company Plastic Logic to commercialise flexible screen technology.

“It’s taken a long time to get the yield up. But it is a market-ready technology.”

Plastic Logic specialises in producing flexible, ultra-thin plastic displays. What can they be used for? Initially, Plastic Logic wanted to get in on the ebook and tablet revolution, creating flexible versions of these types of devices – sort of like a Kindle that you can roll up. The displays were hot drawcards at trade shows around the world, but as this article points out, Plastic Logic had to rein in its ambitions somewhat as the market hasn’t developed as quickly as it expected.

When I asked Sir Richard last night when a mass market flexi-screen smart phone or tablet is likely to be on the market, he prevaricated. “It depends what the use is for,” he said taking my paper notebook and illustrating the problems that are presented to electronic circuits and display surfaces when you fold them into anything other than right-angles.

So the roll-up screen revolution is still a while away. In the meantime, Plastic Logic has shifted its focus to licensing technology to big electronics makers, much as CDT did from the start. But Plastic Logic has invested in a major factory in Dresden, Germany, which can churn out hundreds of thousands of screens each year.

Organic solar cells

The work on PLEDs, organic semiconductors and printing electronics onto thin sheets of flexible plastic led on quite logically to work in solar cell technology.

Pay-as-you-go solar

“Solar is not yet cost-effective,” says Sir Richard. That’s a symptom of the fact that solar cells are, by and large, still based on silicon, which is expensive to process as a hard sheet or wafer. The organic polymers get around that because they can be printed onto thin, flexible films.

“The great selling point is we don’t have to follow the rule book of silicon. The downside is we don’t get to follow the rule book of silicon.”

Recently, Sir Richard’s team also unveiled development of new hybrid solar cells that capture more of the sun’s light spectrum to boost the efficiency of the cells for energy production.

Thin, flexible solar cells effectively mean we can move away from the bulking solar panels currently used to capture the sun’s energy for humankind’s use. Windows or the surface of buildings could be generating energy.

“Lots of people think its a smart thing to do,” admits Sir Richard. “The problem is the building industry is very conservative. They are worried about discoloration, what it will look like in 25 years. It’s still an unproven technology”.

The solar cell development has been spun off into yet another company – Eigth19.

“By the way, I’ve still got a day job in the university,” quips Sir Richard.

One Eight19 project is aimed at the millions of Africans who still rely on kerosene lamps to light their homes after dark. The Battery Box draws current during the day from a flexible solar cell panel so that it is fully charged by nightfall to supply LED lighting – and charge the odd cellphone or two. There are some 750 million “off-grid” cellphones in use in the developing world, so there’s a large market to tap.

The Battery Box also has a novel business model. Rather than asking low income households to pay the cost of the box upfront, users pay as they go – receiving a text message on their phone with a code to activate the box, making micro-payments as they go.

“It looks as though this might fly,” says Sir Richard.

“Its been trialled extensively in Kenya. Cheap light enables school kids to get more education.”

Sir Richard Friend toured New Zealand as the the Royal Society of New Zealand’s 2012 Distinguished Speaker. This Listener piece has more on the science behind his innovations.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) continues to plug the energy transformation necessary if we are to have any hope of staying within a 2oC rise in global temperature. This month has seen the publication of Energy Technology Perspectives 2012 (ETP 2012) in which they explain the technologies and behaviours that according to the press release “will revolutionise the entire energy system and unlock tremendous economic benefits between now and 2050”. My references to the book’s content in what follows are derived from the executive summary. (The book is priced.)

ETP 2012 argues that the technologies we already possess are adequate to the task of cutting emissions drastically if used in an integrated way. The resultant overhaul of the world’s energy system by 2050 will not come cheap. Considerable extra investment money will be needed, $36 trillion by their calculation. But that is genuine investment, not cost, and moreover investment with an excellent return of $100 trillion in savings through the reduced use of fossil fuel. Investing in clean energy makes excellent economic sense at the same time as assisting in the mitigation of climate change.

But although the clean energy technology is available our progress in making use of it is too slow. ETP 2012 may be enthusiastic about the potential, but is coldly realistic about the fact that nine out of ten technologies, including some with the largest potential, are failing to meet the necessary deployment objectives. Only a group of more mature renewable energy technologies – including hydro, biomass, onshore wind and solar photovoltaic (PV) – are making sufficient progress. Energy efficiency technologies are slow to be employed, there is a lack of progress in carbon capture and storage (CCS), and offshore wind and concentrated solar power are lagging. In transport, targets for electric vehicles are encouraging but are more than twice the current industry planned capacity. There has been a dramatic fall in public research, development and demonstration (RD&D) since the 1980s, a trend which needs to be reversed. The effect of slow progress in establishing clean energy is worsened by the fact that high-carbon investment and infrastructure fills the gap and becomes locked in.

ETP 2012 emphasises that effective management of complexity and greater reliance on distributed generation are required as energy is obtained from more diverse sources than we have been accustomed to. This means stronger and smarter infrastructure beyond power generation facilities. Remarkable savings are possible from the intelligent operation of energy systems and a greater degree of demand response.

In a message often and increasingly reiterated in current literature ETP 2012 stresses that improved energy efficiency offers the greatest potential for boosting energy security and reduced carbon emissions. The report covers a variety of technological and policy options that would cut the global economy’s per-unit use of energy by two-thirds before 2050.

The report recognises that fossil fuels will not disappear, but emphasises the need for changes in their use. It sees the current increase in the use of coal for electricity generation as the single most problematic trend in the relationship between energy and climate change and urges that where regions are dependent on coal advantage be taken of the significant potential for improvements in the efficiency of coal-fired power generation. Natural gas will continue to play a role, but there are questions around the long-term viability of some gas infrastructure investment if climate change objectives are to be met. Carbon capture and storage remain critical in the long term. CCS is the only technology on the horizon today that would allow that would allow industrial sectors (such as iron and steel, cement and natural gas processing) to meet deep emissions reduction goals. It should not be abandoned.

Governments have a decisive role to play in setting policies to help key technologies become truly competitive and widely used. They should encourage national clean energy technology goals and escalate the ambition of international collaboration. IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven speaks with a touch of exasperation:

“Now that we have identified the solution and the host of related benefits, and with the window of opportunity closing fast, when will governments wake up to the dangers of complacency and adopt the bold policies that radically transform our energy system? To do anything less is to deny our societies the welfare they deserve.”

Stringent and credible clean energy targets along with transparent and predictable supporting policies make investment less risky. A meaningful price on carbon would send a vital price signal to consumers and technology developers. Phasing out fossil fuel subsidies – which in 2011 were almost seven times higher than the support for renewable energy – is critical to level the playing field across all fuels and technologies. Substantial support for RD&D is essential to stimulate the development of new, breakthrough technologies.

ETP 2012 offers real-world examples which demonstrate that decisive policy action is a catalyst for progress.

The success of some renewable energy technologies provides evidence that new, emerging technologies can break into and successfully compete in the market place. Solar PV has averaged 42% annual growth globally over the last decade; onshore wind has averaged 27%. As a result of strategic and sustained policy support of early stage research, development, demonstration and market deployment, these technologies have reached a stage where the private sector can play a bigger role, allowing subsidies to be scaled back.

ETP 2012 only affirms what reports from many other sources have been saying for some time. But it is significant that it comes from the IEA, an intergovernmental organisation whose 28 member countries between them have the capacity to produce big changes in the energy system. Whether they have the capacity to listen to the advice they are receiving may be moot. But it has been delivered unequivocally and leaves their policy makers without grounds for rejecting it. There is an energy solution to climate change and still just time in which to adopt it.

As the northern hemisphere starts to warm (rather rapidly in the USA), climate watchers’ thoughts turn to melting ice, and to tell us what happened last year and what might be in store this summer, Glenn and Gareth welcome back Greenland expert Jason Box from the Byrd Polar research Centre at Ohio State University. It’s a wide ranging and fascinating discussion, not to be missed. John Cook looks at the differences between sea ice in the Arctic and Antarctic, and we have news coverage of the new HadCRUT4 global temperature series, summertime in winter in the USA, worrying news about sea level from the Pliocene, a new report on climate change in the Pacific, and new developments in solar power and biofuels.

Watch The Climate Show on our Youtube channel, subscribe to the podcast via iTunes, listen to us via Stitcher on your smartphone or listen direct/download from the link below the fold.

International Falls, Minnesota hit 78°F yesterday, 42° above average, and the 2nd hottest March temperature on record in the Nation’s Icebox. The record of 79°F was set the previous day. Remarkably, the low temperature for International Falls bottomed out at 60°F yesterday, tying the previous record high for the date. I’ve never seen a station with a century-long data record have its low temperature for the date match the previous record high for the date. Yesterday was the seventh consecutive day that International Falls broke or tied a daily record. That is spectacularly hard to do for a station with a century-long weather record. The longest string of consecutive records being broken I’m aware of is nine days in a row, set June 2 – 10, 1911 in Tulsa, Oklahoma (with weather records going back to 1905.) International Falls has a good chance of surpassing nine consecutive records this week.

“6th, 7th Consecutive Days of Record-Warmth Likely Updated: Monday, 19 Mar 2012, 12:37 PM CDT Published : Monday, 19 Mar 2012, 7:38 AM CDT Sun-Times Media Wire Chicago – In what meteorologists are calling a ’historic and unprecedented’ streak, the Chicago area should hit the sixth day in a row of record warm temperatures on Monday, even on the last day of winter.”

Even if humankind manages to limit global warming to 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F), as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recommends, future generations will have to deal with sea levels 12 to 22 meters (40 to 70 feet) higher than at present, according to research published in the journal Geology.

…until recently there has been limited reliable detailed scientific information available to [Pacific Island] countries. A major new report recently released by the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO is helping to fill this gap. It provides the most comprehensive scientific analysis to date of climate change in the Pacific region.
The 530 page, two-volume scientific report called ’Climate Change in the Pacific: Scientific Assessment and New Research’ shows clear evidence of how the climate in the Pacific has changed and may change in the future.

Possibly linked to recent changes in wind patterns, ozone concentrations in the Arctic stratosphere during March 2011 were the lowest ever recorded during the period beginning in 1979.

Higher temperatures in the Arctic and unusually lower temperatures in some low latitude regions are linked to global shifts in atmospheric wind patterns.

Links to ’Weird Weather’

While oceanic and atmospheric patterns such as El NiÃ±o, La NiÃ±a, and the North Atlantic Oscillation have been blamed for the spate of unusual weather recently, there’s now a new culprit in the wind: Arctic amplification…

A persistent and strong negative North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index was responsible for southerly air flow along the west of Greenland, which caused anomalously warm weather in winter 2010-11 and summer 2011.

During summer, absorbed solar energy, modulated at the surface primarily by albedo, is the dominant factor governing surface melt variability in the ablation area.

Using satellite observations of albedo and melt extent with calibrated regional climate model output, we determine the spatial dependence and quantitative impact of the ice sheet albedo feedback in twelve summer periods beginning in 2000.

We find that while the albedo feedback is negative over 70 % of the ice sheet, concentrated in the accumulation area above 1500 m, positive feedback prevailing over the ablation area accounts for more than half of the overall increase in melting.

Over the ablation area, year 2010 and 2011 absorbed solar energy was more than twice as large as in years 2000—2004.

Anomalous anticyclonic circulation, associated with a persistent summer North Atlantic Oscillation extreme since 2007 enabled three amplifying mechanisms to maximize the albedo feedback:

The summer net radiation for the high elevation accumulation area approached positive values during this period.

while negative feedback has been reducing impact of warming, the surface radiation budget has gotten more positive, seems a threshold is about to be crossed! All what is needed more is another decadal trend increase like the last decade, THIS IS LIKELY! It is reasonable to predict that we will observe mid summer (mid July) melting over 100% of the ice sheet surface. Max melt extent was ~65% in 2010.

The area and duration of melting at the surface of the ice sheet in summer 2011 were the third highest since 1979.

The area of marine-terminating glaciers continued to decrease, though at less than half the rate of the previous 10 years.

In situ measurements revealed near record-setting mass losses concentrated at higher elevations on the western slope of the ice sheet, and at an isolated glacier in southeastern Greenland.

Total ice sheet mass loss in 2011 was 70% larger than the 2003-09 average annual loss rate of -250 Gt y-1. According to satellite gravity data obtained since 2002, ice sheet mass loss is accelerating.

Summer plans

’holistic’ glacier study, Store Glacier, 70 N W Greenland…the idea is to observe the system not just make and analyze this or that measurement

Soon after writing the post in which I reported Carbon War Room CEO Shigar Khan’s prediction that within this decade incremental energy will all be coming from renewables I saw Paul Krugman’s latest column in the New York Times. He draws attention to the rapidly falling cost of solar power:

If the downward trend continues – and if anything it seems to be accelerating – we’re just a few years from the point at which electricity from solar panels becomes cheaper than electricity generated by burning coal.

That, of course, is the point at which there’s no longer any question of continuing with new coal or even gas powered electricity generation.

Not that it’s a matter of simply waiting for that to happen. Krugman points out that it would likely already have happened if fossil fuels were priced to take into account the external costs they impose. And he sees the fossil fuel industry fighting hard to oppose and delay the transition.

Let’s face it: a large part of our political class, including essentially the entire G.O.P., is deeply invested in an energy sector dominated by fossil fuels, and actively hostile to alternatives. This political class will do everything it can to ensure subsidies for the extraction and use of fossil fuels, directly with taxpayers’ money and indirectly by letting the industry off the hook for environmental costs, while ridiculing technologies like solar.

The failure of the solar panel company Solyndra is currently being proclaimed by some in the US as a sign that renewable energy is on a downward slide. But, as Krugman points out, the failure of Solyndra can be better understood as testimony to the rapidly lowering costs of panels, which the Solyndra technology was unable to match.

Krugman refers to an illuminating Scientific Americanblog post by computer scientist and entrepreneur Ramez Naam (pictured). It’s well worth reading in full, but I’ll pull out a few points here. Naam begins by reminding readers of just how much energy the sun provides to Earth. In 14 and a half seconds it provides as much as humanity uses in a day, in 88 minutes as much as we consume in a year. In 112 hours — less than five days — it provides 36 zettajoules of energy — as much energy as is contained in all proven reserves of oil, coal, and natural gas on the planet. Capturing one tenth of one percent of the solar energy striking the earth — one part in one thousand — would give us access to six times as much energy as we consume in all forms today, with almost no greenhouse gas emissions.

Up to now solar energy provides only 0.2 percent of all energy production. The energy itself may be abundant but the systems to capture it have been expensive and inefficient. But Naam explains that that is changing. The price of capture has been dropping exponentially, to the extent that people are starting to talk of a Moore’s Law in solar energy, not as dramatic as in the computing world in which it has been formulated, but possibly with similar dynamics. He produces graphs to show the exponential nature of the dropping price.

Two factors contribute. One is manufacturers learning how to reduce the cost of fabrication. The other is the continual improvement in the efficiency of solar cells so that they capture higher proportions of the sun’s energy that strikes them. Manufacture of the panels is only part of the cost. Historically installation costs have been half of the total. But they too appear to be dropping at a similar pace.

So where are we headed?

The cost of solar, in the average location in the U.S., will cross the current average retail electricity price of 12 cents per kilowatt hour in around 2020, or 9 years from now. In fact, given that retail electricity prices are currently rising by a few percent per year, prices will probably cross earlier, around 2018 for the country as a whole, and as early as 2015 for the sunniest parts of America.

And from there on in it’s an ever-widening gap:

10 years later, in 2030, solar electricity is likely to cost half what coal electricity does today. Solar capacity is being built out at an exponential pace already. When the prices become so much more favourable than those of alternate energy sources, that pace will only accelerate.

Naam acknowledges the need to be careful in extrapolating trends out. The exponential eventually levels off or becomes linear. But he reports that physicists and engineers in the solar world are optimistic about their roadmaps for the coming decade.

As he concludes, that’s good news for the world.

But it’s only good news if it is allowed to happen. We shouldn’t underestimate the dark forces in our economies which will fight to preserve favoured treatment for fossil fuels. Look at the commitment of the New Zealand government to support oil and gas and coal mining more vigorously than renewable energy, to cash in on other nations’ burning of the fuel we hope to export, to disastrously develop our lignite fields. Renewable energy shouldn’t have to make its way against an opposing tide of government-supported fossil fuel development. Investment should now be flowing overwhelmingly to green energy, encouraged and supported by government action to price carbon properly and discourage or stop the mining of fossil fuels. Until then the good news remains somewhat muted.

No sooner had I finished reviewing Fools Rule, which recounts the determination of many nations to carry on with the further discovery and exploitation of fossil fuels in blunt defiance of the warnings of science, than I read Fred Pearce’s article in Yale Environment 360 detailing how the world is in fact burning more and more coal. He pointed to the irony of the forthcoming UN negotiations in Durban, South Africa, where the talk of how to kick the coal habit will take place in a country with high CO2 emissions and a thriving export industry in power-station coal. Not that he was singling out South Africa — the trend is shared over many countries. As if in confirmation our Prime Minister on the same day, during the leaders’ debate, affirmed yet again his government’s commitment to expand mining and drilling operations — in an environmentally responsible way, of course. He offered Australia as an example of the prosperity to be obtained thereby.

Feeling depressed, I noticed an item in my inbox which I had neglected for a couple of days. It was an article by Earth Policy Institute research associate Matthew Roney reporting a record production of photovoltaic cells in 2010. I know Lester Brown’s Earth Policy Institute can seemingly conjure optimism out of thin air, but its reports are brutal in the delineation of the environmental threats we face and its optimism hardly comes cheap. So I read on. The production total for 2010 was 24,000 megawatts, double that of 2009 and a nearly hundred-fold increase since the 277 megawatts of 2000. Newly installed PV also set a record in 2010, as 16,600 megawatts were installed in more than 100 countries. This brought the total worldwide capacity of solar PV to nearly 40,000 megawatts–enough to power 14 million European homes.

That’s obviously still tiny by comparison with fossil fuel powered electricity which supplies over 40 percent of the world’s energy. But PV is growing rapidly. The article carries interesting figures for a number of countries. Germany, hardly a likely candidate for extensive photovoltaic generation, leads the world with 17,200 megawatts of installed PV, generating enough electricity to power some 3.4 million German homes. Italy is on the move and now ranks fourth in the world with 3,500 megawatts PV power capacity. Its official 2020 goal was 8000 megawatts, but it is likely to meet that target this year, and Enel, Italy’s leading utility, sees the country reaching 30,000 megawatts by 2020–enough to satisfy half of its current residential electricity needs.

Roney acknowledges that although the cost of solar has fallen substantially it is not yet widely price-competitive with fossil fuel-sourced power. However that’s only because the latter is heavily subsidized and protected from its external costs. If that protection were removed from fossil fuels PV would quickly be revealed as one of the least expensive sources of power.

The article in conclusion emphasises that the potential for solar power is practically without a limit. It links to a 2011 article published in Energy Policy which shows that solar PV deployed in suitable locations could generate 30 times the electricity currently produced worldwide. That article itself is well worth reading as a careful estimate of the adequacy of wind, water and sunlight (WWS) as sources of all the world’s energy requirements. It suggests producing all new energy with WWS by 2030 and replacing the pre-existing energy by 2050. Barriers to the plan are primarily social and political, not technological or economic. The energy cost in a WWS world should be similar to that today.

None of that overcomes the political barriers, but it does give confidence to those who want to keep challenging shallow politicians and their puppet masters in the fossil fuel industry.

Added to the pleasure I took from the two articles was that which came from listening to what Jigar Shah, CEO of the Carbon War Room had to say in a podcast interview on Climate Progress. (The interview starts about half way through the podcast.) The Carbon War Room, founded by Richard Branson among others, works to help capital flow to entrepreneurial solutions to climate change, focusing on solutions that make economic sense right now. Shah makes it clear that solar, wind and electric cars, which now have a long track record, are ready for the trillion dollar investment that they need. He considers that renewables are already cheaper for new capacity than natural gas. Asked about the doubters, Shah replies that some are ignorant, but some, such as the big oil companies are better described as diabolical:

They’ll say: ’we need all of the above.’ Or they say: ’we are huge supporters of solar and wind if only their costs would come down by 20%. Then, you know, if there were big breakthroughs in the technology, we’d be huge supporters.’

No, that actually just means that they don’t love solar and wind. It actually means that they hate those technologies and that, in fact, they are trying to figure out, using white lies, how to undermine those technologies… They’re actually trying to figure out how to play a nice PR trick to marginalize you.

Stephen Lacey, the interviewer, asks him at what point we can expect to see our incremental energy come from renewables.

Within this decade. Within this decade in the western world you’ll see — in Europe any day now and in the US probably by 2015 or so — you’ll see no new natural gas…no new coal plants.

To make money on shale gas the producers need gas prices which make it more expensive in new capacity than new solar and new wind. So there’s no need for natural gas.

I’m not saying that by 2015 we’ll stop burning natural gas I’m simply saying that on an incremental basis we don’t need any more new natural gas plants.

Asked about the storage issue for renewables Shah said there are lots of easy ways to solve that problem. We don’t need baseload plants. Coal power plants are the opposite of baseload — 12 percent of unplanned outages each year just throws the entire system into a frenzy. Engineers are not too stupid to implement intermittent technologies. We know how to solve the problem, we just have a political problem with a bunch of people who haven’t figured out how to use the internet.

Is the separation between what’s happening on the ground in the business community and the perceptions in politics and the press greater than ever?

Yeah, I think that when you look at renewable energy, energy efficiency, clean cars and clean technologies, those technologies are moving forward unabated. It actually doesn’t matter what [anyone] says – doesn’t matter because those entrepreneurs, the thousands of them that are in every single city in every single country are moving forward as though they’ve never heard you and I speak. So they don’t actually care what you and I have to say. They’re moving forward.

Dare we hope that political denial and delay will be outflanked by entrepreneurial innovation and deployment of technologies? Might this mean that fossil fuels are made redundant even while we’re going to extraordinary lengths to locate and exploit them? It’s a happy thought to entertain.